Colleen Hughes '04

It’s Monday. My spring semester officially begins on Thursday, which is also coincidentally my 28^th birthday. I figured I should share some of the highlights of my first semester with you before jumping into the second one. Most MFA programs accept less than five students, but we have a big class at BU this year—there are eight of us, which is twice the size of their usual Playwriting classes. It’s been fun having a bigger group because we all have our own personal style and unique background, so you get feedback from a wide variety of perspectives.

We had to take two workshops this fall—one class focused on writing full-length plays, the other devoted to writing shorter pieces, ten-minute and one-act plays. Both classes were workshop format, meaning that on a given day, a few students bring in work that they’ve written, and the work is read aloud in class and given critique and feedback. In our short-plays class, we serve as each other’s readers, which is fun because I get to do a little acting. In our full-length class, however, the program hires local actors to come in and read for us, which is really cool. It’s also terrifying. Sometimes I ask myself why I went into playwriting when hearing my work out loud makes me want to block my ears and run into the nearest dark corner to hide. I’ve always been introverted and shy, and I thought that hearing my unpolished first drafts read out loud would send me into a weekly panic. I’ve been ok though. Everyone in the class is supportive and wonderful. It’s really great to hear them laugh at lines that you’re not quite sure were funny, and the feedback is always insightful. I’ve learned how vital it really is to hear works in progress read out loud. It’s completely beyond helpful for the revision process.

In one of the scariest moments of the semester, our short-plays class did a brief lesson on writing song lyrics for musicals, and each of us had to write lyrics for prerecorded musical tracks of a ballad and an uptempo piece. The scary part? We then had to sing the songs we’d written in front of the class. I am not a singer. During my Holy Cross years, I appeared in a couple Fenwick shows and an ACT straight show, but I could never get cast in a musical because my throat closes up and I panic whenever I have to sing by myself (unless it’s for Rock Band, which I love). Most of the class was just as nervous as I was about singing. But to ease our collective nerves, we all met up as a class beforehand to go out to lunch at a pub across the street from the theatre. We had a great time, and I was so much less nervous when it was my turn to perform in front of them. I felt like I’d come a long way from the girl who broke down in tears during Voice in Acting class on more than one occasion.

I also had a really key moment in one of my full-length classes. I’m originally from Somerville, MA, and I’m living there again while I attend grad school. The full-length play I’ve been working on is about a Somerville family, and I have it staged on a big open set where the audience would be able to see every room in the house at once and action could take place in and across multiple rooms. The actors were reading through one of my scenes, and the professor stopped them midway through and asked me come up to the stage and position the actors where they would roughly be if we were staging an actual production. So instead of six actors lined up across the stage, I had a few far right, one far left, and two that had to climb a ladder that happened to be on stage to simulate being on the second floor. The actors then read the scene over again, this time shouting across “rooms” of the house and crossing in and out of “rooms” where the stage directions indicated. It was amazing how much more effective my scene was seeing it with even the most minimal level of blocking applied to it. It was one of those moments where it clicked with me that “wow, I’m really doing this. I’m really in this program and writing a play and it’s actually coming together.” It is a moment that I look back on for encouragement on days where I’m struggling to move forward with the script.

I guess that about brings us back to the present. I’m currently enjoying the last few days of my semester break. I’ve been away from class since December 7, and in that time I’ve gotten to attend a party at my theatre, my office’s annual holiday party, and several family events. I have a really big extended family—my mother is the oldest of seven, and I am the oldest of 21 grandchildren on that side. Every year one of my aunts hosts a big giant Christmas party for the entire family, and then there’s a second party on Christmas Eve for anyone who is available to make it. This year we also had a special New Year’s Day party where we all gathered to watch the Bruins play at Fenway in the Winter Classic. One of my brothers decided that our immediate family all needed to wear ugly Christmas sweaters to the big family party. Below is picture of said ugly sweaters and another of all 21 grandchildren, together in one photo for the first time (I am bravely posting both of these even though I have glasses-glare in one and redeye in another).

Hi everyone! Welcome to my first blog entry. My name’s Colleen, and I’m a member of the class of 2004. I’m just about to enter my second semester of an MFA program in Playwriting at Boston University, and I wanted to share my progress with all of you. An MFA isn’t a very common degree to pursue (when asked what I’m going to school for, I’ve gotten the comment “a what in what???” when I reply that I’m getting an MFA in playwriting), so I thought it might make for an interesting story. I also noticed that I’m not the only one of my friends who recently went back or made plans to go back to school after spending a few “gap years” in the workplace. I thought that others going through this process or young alums thinking about going to grad school someday might be able to relate.

Some of you are probably thinking “why playwriting?” and I don’t blame you. It’s not exactly the most lucrative of careers. But I love it, even if that took me awhile to discover. I was a double-major in English and Theatre during my years at Holy Cross, and I was also in the Creative Writing program in poetry. I never had a class in playwriting, but for my honors thesis senior year, I decided to try my hand in writing a play in verse, as a way of combining all of my interests into one big final project. One of my advisors, Professor Ed Isser from Theatre, suggested that after graduation I should consider submitting my play to MFA programs. It was something I had never even thought of. I never thought that my writing would be strong enough for graduate programs.

I graduated, got a job as a copyeditor, and settled into my life in the “real world,” but I never forgot about graduate school, and the idea would haunt me every now and then. Finally, on the day of my 25^th birthday, it hit me that I had to stop putting off grad school out of fear and intimidation and just go for it. I knew that if I continued to push the idea out of my head that someday I would regret never trying. I contacted a few Holy Cross professors, who were more than willing to give me advice even though I had been out of school for over three years. I finally applied, which was one of the most daunting processes ever, and I started at BU this past September.

And because I’m insane, I also decided to keep my copyediting job while going to school. My company has been great and allows me to work from home with flexible hours so that I can attend my classes. I took two playwriting workshops this past fall, and I am in two more this spring. I’m hoping to take two electives in the first summer session and one more in the second summer session. If I can make that schedule work, and then transfer in the literature course I took last year at UMass Amherst, I should be done with my degree by September 2010. It’s such an intense program, and I’m looking forward to sharing the rest of my progress with all of you. I can guarantee that there will be weeks when I am stressed out of my mind, but at least it should make for some good stories to share.